Montreal is located at 45°30 N / -73°36 W. It is the largest city in Quebec and the second largest in Canada, with an estimated metropolitan population of 4 million. Montreal is one of two large islands in this part of the St. Lawrence River (the other, Île Jésus, includes Laval and several other communities) and its highest point, Mount Royal, is 232m/761 ft high.

The entire island of Montreal became a single municipality on January 1, 2002 although this was reversed January 1, 2006 in the case of 14 of the suburbs, leaving 15 municipalities on the island, of which Montreal is by far the largest, being divided into 19 boroughs (arrondissements) each of which has a borough mayor and a certain amount of autonomy. Wikipedia’s article on the 2002-06 municipal reorganization of Montreal goes into detail.

You can check the seven-day forecast and have a look at current weather conditions as well as find information on weather statistics on the government’s weather site.

Montreal’s climate varies a lot over the year. The city is known for its cold winters, but its summers are hot and generally sunny, with occasional muggy days. May and October are arguably the pleasantest months for outdoor activities and walking. Evenings will often remain a little chilly except on the hottest days.

One thing worth understanding about Montreal is that it begins to snow in late November and although snow is quickly removed from roads and sidewalks, it piles up everywhere else and remains part of the landscape until it begins to retreat sometime in mid-March.

Average temperatures vary from 10 to 25°F (-13° to 5°C) in January to 65-80°F (18°-27°C) in July.

The island of Montreal* uses the 514 area code. Laval, the North Shore, the South Shore, the Laurentians, Upper Richelieu, Lanaudière, Montérégie, Eastern Townships and Upper Yamaska use the area code 450. Some calls from 514 to 450 are local, some are not; most calls from Montreal to Laval and Longueuil are local and do not require dialing 1. A new code, 438, is being gradually introduced, mostly for cell phone service, because 514 is nearly full up. 450 is growing so fast that it will soon be joined by another code, 579.

A local call from a phone booth costs 50 cents.

*also Île Bizard, Île Perrot, Nuns’ Island (Île des Soeurs), Île Sainte-Hélène and Île Notre-Dame (the last two islands are parts of Parc Jean-Drapeau and are not inhabited)

Within Canada letters (up to 30 g) cost $0.85 if you buy stamps in bulk, $1.00 individually. To the U.S., letters are $1.20 and elsewhere $2.50. There is no postcard rate – a postcard counts as a first-class letter. More details here. Canadian postal codes can be looked up on the Canada Post website. U.S. zip codes can be looked up here.

Internet:

Montreal has some areas with free wireless connections and there are cafés that offer free wi-fi. The city has installed some free wi-fi in Old Montreal.

You may want to consider joining the free wireless group Île Sans Fil and creating an account there before coming to Montreal. They provide free wifi in many cafés and other public places.

This conference page has a lot of information on bringing phones to Canada and getting SIM cards for Montreal. Please note that it dates from 2014 so some of the charges and details may have changed.

The unit of currency is the Canadian dollar. Coins are in denominations of 5, 10 and 25 cents, and $1 (a large gold-colored coin) and $2 (a large bimetallic coin). Bills in $5 (blue), $10 (purple) and $20 (green) are in common circulation and you can get $50s (red) and $100s (brown) from banks, though not from most automatic teller machines (ATMs).

New Canadian currency is made of plastic. Paper bills are rarely seen any more.

The copper penny was phased out in February 2013. Cash registers can show totals with pennies but they are rounded up during cash payments. The rules for rounding are outlined on this government page.

Most stores and restaurants accept Visa and MasterCard and some accept American Express. You usually get the most favourable exchange rate by using your credit card. Most ATMs are networked to Cirrus and Interac and accept major credit cards if you have a PIN to enter into the machine.

There are many currency exchange centers throughout the downtown area. They either charge a fee or take a couple of percentage points off the exchange rate for their services. Banks can usually handle U.S. funds without any problem but may not be prepared to handle other currencies. Bank branches are commonly open from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. during the week, often with extended hours on Thursday or Friday, but all Canadian banks have reduced the number of their branches in recent years and, in some cases, reduced the hours of existing branches.

Taxes:

Most goods and services in Quebec are subject to two taxes, a federal Goods and Services Tax of 5% (usually listed as TPS on receipts – Taxe sur les produits et services) and a provincial sales tax of 9.975% (TVQ on receipts – Taxe de vente du Québec). An accommodation tax of 3.5% per night of hotel stay is also charged.

Books are not provincially taxed, and most groceries are not taxed at all unless something counts as ready-to-eat. Almost everything else is taxable.

Tipping:

A tip of 15% is customarily left for waiters and waitresses at the table, calculated on the pre-tax total of your bill. It will not be calculated for you – the additional charges on a restaurant bill are taxes, not service charges, and are not voluntary. You are free to leave more or less than a 15% tip if circumstances warrant. In bars, the tip tends to be offered as you pay for each drink or round. Taxi drivers also normally get a tip of 10 to 15% as do those who render personal services such as haircuts. Many counter service establishments have a tip jar: whether you drop in a bit of change is entirely up to you.

Visitors need a valid passport to enter Canada. They may also require a visa (see below). For information, check with a Canadian embassy or consulate.

Persons under 18 years of age travelling without their parents should have a letter of authorization from a parent or guardian to travel into Canada. The U.S. government has a useful page with further tips for U.S. residents visiting Canada.

Visitors from non-visa countries can stay for three months in Canada and can arrange an extension of a further three months on application to Immigration Canada.

If you are divorced, separated or travelling without your spouse and are bringing your children to Canada, you should bring a document demonstrating the permission of the other spouse, proof of legal custody or a notarized letter from the other custodian(s) which gives travel permission for the specific duration of the trip.

Each adult visitor may import, duty free, a maximum of 40 ounces (1.1 litres) of liquor, or 24 12-oz cans of beer or ale into Canada as personal luggage. Up to 50 cigars, 200 cigarettes, and 400 grams of tobacco and 400 tobacco sticks may be allowed entry duty free. There are many rules for importing firearms into Canada.

This government page lists countries according to visa requirements as well as special categories of visitor not requiring a visa.

You can check this page to find the addresses of foreign embassies in Canada.

A public airport shuttle, the 747, runs from the downtown area to the airport. It is equipped with luggage racks and accepts regular STM tickets and passes although cash fare (coins only) is $10, which also buys you a pass good for 24 hours on the entire STM system. If you’re in town, you can buy a ticket for the 747 bus with a credit card at any parking terminal, but it won’t include the day-long pass.

Montreal has bus connections to other cities within Quebec, in the rest of Canada and in the United States. Intercity bus travel does not carry the same stigma as in the U.S. and the buses to Quebec City and Toronto, for example, are quite clean and pleasant. The main bus terminus is the Gare d’autocars de Montréal on Berri between Ontario and de Maisonneuve, tel. 514-842-2281, metro station Berri-UQÀM.

Trains:

Montreal is on Via Rail‘s Windsor-Quebec corridor. You can reserve tickets on their website or get them from your travel agent.

Amtrak runs the Adirondack from Montreal to New York daily. Tickets can be priced and reserved on the site. This is currently the only passenger train connection from Montreal to the United States.

There are two major downtown train stations, Central Station (Gare Centrale) and Lucien-L’Allier. Both are connected to the Bonaventure Metro station and thus to the underground city. Lucien-L’Allier, also connected to the metro station of the same name, is only used for commuter trains.

Central Station, unlike major train stations in many other cities, is functionally invisible. It’s located underground below the Queen Elizabeth Hotel and just north of Place Bonaventure. It’s easily reached from Ste-Catherine Street by strolling through the Place Ville-Marie mall and looking for the wayfinding signs, or via Bonaventure metro station. Any taxi driver can bring you directly there. But don’t expect to find a physical train station at street level.

Montreal is in the Eastern time zone of North America, 4 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time during the summer (Eastern Daylight, EDT) and 5 hours during the winter (Eastern Standard, EST). Daylight Savings Time is observed from the second Sunday in March till the first Sunday in November.

In French and sometimes in English you will see times quoted in 24-hour format, e.g. 20h30 is the same as 8:30 p.m. Keep this in mind for the times of events and for parking restrictions noted on official signs.

Opening hours:

Common retail hours are from 9 a.m. till 6 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, from 9 a.m. till 9 p.m. Thursdays and Fridays, and from 9 a.m. till 5 p.m. Saturdays. There are exceptions: many large pharmacies, some grocery stores and some bookstores stay open late all week, and some smaller boutiques may open their doors later in the morning; noontime opening Sunday is not unusual. If you are uncertain about a store’s hours it is wise to phone ahead.

Officially, Canada is metric. Temperatures are given in Celsius (we really don’t use Fahrenheit any more) and road distances and speed limits are in kilometres: cars are calibrated in km. That said, many Canadians will still give casual measures in feet, inches, pounds and ounces, depending on circumstances, and these are usually still well understood if you use them.

Some stores open on holidays, although Christmas is all but universally a closing day. Easter Monday seems to be declining in importance and is mostly observed now only by government offices, which also close on Remembrance Day, November 11. Businesses and schools stay open on November 11, but civic ceremonies are held to honour war veterans and two minutes of silence are traditionally observed at 11 a.m.

Montreal is a cosmopolitan city. Quebec’s language laws impose restrictions on outdoor signs in languages other than French so you will see few signs in English, but in the parts of Montreal where most travellers go, services are available in English as well as in French. French is heard throughout the city but in many neighbourhoods other languages will also be heard. Roughly half of Montreal’s residents speak French at home.

The Wikipedia page on the demographics of Montreal shows that, after French and English, the next languages commonly spoken are Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Haitian Creole, Greek and Chinese. The variety of Chinese is not specified.

Health care in Canada is of a high standard but it is advised that you get travellers’ insurance before leaving home because it is not free for visitors. Keep the insurance documentation with you in case of emergency. You should bring any medications you need with you, especially sufficient quantities of prescription medicines. These should be kept in their original containers to avoid difficulties at borders.

Sanitation is equal to any developed country and our tap water is drinkable. You do not need any special immunizations to visit Canada and you do not need to drink bottled water here.

Montreal has a relatively low crime rate. Nonetheless it is a large city and you should remain normally vigilant about your possessions and your person. There are a few sketchy parts of town but none that are categorically dangerous.

Beer and wine can be sold in stores until 11 p.m. and bars must stop selling alcohol at 3 a.m.

Smoking is not permitted on any form of public transit, in restaurants and bars including terrasses (patios), stores, shopping centres, in cinemas, in elevators, in government offices or in banks, and inside office buildings. It’s illegal to smoke in a vehicle with children under 16. Many buildings have cigarette disposal arrangements outside and a 9-meter smoke-free distance is obligatory from the entrances of public buildings like schools, hospitals and libraries. You must be 18 years or older to buy tobacco in Quebec. Vaping is regarded as the same as smoking, legally.

Marijuana will become legal in Canada on October 17, 2018, but will be subject to fairly strict controls in Quebec. Meantime, police mostly tolerate possession of small amounts for personal use but grow-ops are prone to being raided.

Minors can’t buy lottery tickets or scratch games and can’t go to the Casino.

Montreal’s original street grid was laid out long ago relative to the old port on the St. Lawrence River waterfront so our “north” is actually northwest, or close to it. Some people find it disorienting or annoying to discover that in Montreal the sun apparently rises in the south and sets in the north. It’s probably too late to do anything about this convention but it may be helpful to understand that it exists. This also explains why the South Shore is actually mostly to the east on maps.

As you go north, away from the St. Lawrence, address numbers increment. If an address includes “east” or “west” this is relative to Boulevard Saint-Laurent (also known as St. Lawrence or “the Main”, sketched as a red line on the map at right) from which addresses increment both eastward and westward, sometimes into the five figures.

You may not turn right on red lights in Montreal, although this is now permitted in Quebec off Montreal island.

Montreal presents some hazards for drivers. Pedestrians are pretty blasé about crossing on red lights, and most road construction and repairs have to be done in the summer months so you are likely to run into occasional detours when driving around town in the summer.

Seatbelts are mandatory even in back seats. Helmets are required for motorcyclists. It is obligatory to stop when a school bus is stopping, regardless of the direction in which you are driving. On a few major streets, bus lanes are marked with a large white diamond shape and you should not use and absolutely must not stop or park in these lanes within the hours noted on the accompanying signs. Some streets have bike lanes: these will be marked.

City police patrol in white cars with a blue stripe (although they also have several stealth cars in white or black, with very faint markings). Parking infractions are monitored by city employees in reddish-orange cars – these folks wear green uniforms and are sometimes known as Green Onions.

The older part of Montreal was built up before the automobile and streets can be narrow and cramped, so parking conditions can sometimes be frustrating. Be wary of neighbourhoods where certain parking spots are reserved for local people with numbered stickers. In addition, on residential streets, days and times for street cleaning or snow removal should be visible on a sign and at those times you need to move your car if it’s on the side to be cleaned. After heavy snowfall you may see small no-parking signs stuck right into snowbanks.

Because parking can be so difficult, sightseeing on foot and by Metro is encouraged, at least within downtown, the Plateau and Old Montreal, unless you have mobility problems.

The Sûreté du Québec (SQ) patrols on highways, both inside and outside the city, usually in white cars with a double stripe, black and yellow. Outside the city, local municipalities can also ticket you if you commit an infraction on a road in their territory.

Maps and information about the transit system are also available in every Metro station and at tourist information points. There’s also an excellent app called Transit for iPhone and iPod Touch and for Android which gives scheduled timing for bus routes near one’s location. The STM is gradually introducing real-time GPS-based bus data but it isn’t yet displayed via any app.

The Metro shuts down around 12:30 a.m. after which the whole system shifts over to the night bus service until around 5:30 a.m.

The STM fare system consists of the Opus smart card and one-trip magnetic cards. Bus drivers neither make change nor sell tickets, but all metro stations have manned ticket booths and ticket machines. If you pay a fare with change, take the card from the machine and keep it to use as a transfer if necessary. You do not need a ticket or pass to exit the metro system as you do in some cities but you are obliged to have a valid fare with you to show transit police if they ask (and they do).

A monthly regular adult pass (CAM – carte autobus-métro) giving full access to the STM metro and bus system costs $85.00. A single fare is $3.25 and in the bus must be paid with exact change. For tourists a special card giving full access for a day costs $10 and for three consecutive days costs $18. Full fare information including other options and points of sale.

People who are not Montreal residents don’t qualify for seniors’ reductions or student fares on the STM system.

Surrounding Montreal are other transit systems including the large STL serving Laval and RTL serving the South Shore. There are also six commuter train lines serving various suburbs. A regular STM pass or bus/metro ticket does not include access to commuter trains or off-island bus systems.

Bicycles

If you’re comfortable on a bicycle it would be interesting to see Montreal en vélo. Bicycling magazine named Montreal the top bicycling city for 1999. However, keep in mind that motorists tend to be aggressive and you have to ride circumspectly.

Montreal has pioneered Bixi, a system of short-term rental bicycles available in a large area of central Montreal. These beautifully designed, adjustable and comfortable three-speed aluminum bicycles have been adopted by locals and tourists alike. The fare structure is geared toward short-term use: after paying one’s five dollars for 24 hours of access, the bikes are free to use for trips taking less than half an hour, but the rates rise pretty fast if you keep a bike longer than an hour. There are several iPhone apps that track Bixi availability in real time. Bixi racks are removed toward the end of November for winter, and reappear in late April or May.

Helmets are not mandatory for cyclists, but bicycles should be equipped with reflectors if you will be riding after dark, and if you’re using your own bike or a longer term rental bike you should have a good lock: bicycle theft is endemic. The Maison des Cyclistes, 1251 Rachel East, 514-521-8356, rents bikes and sells maps of bike paths in and around the city. There is also bicycle rental in the Old Port (514-847-0666). You can bring a bicycle into the metro, but you must follow the rules and you may find bicycles barred at the height of festival season.

Montreal has four daily newspapers. Only one, The Gazette, is in English. There are three French-language dailies, Le Devoir, La Presse and Le Journal de Montréal. Of these, only the Journal still prints a Sunday edition. La Presse completely ceased printing on paper at the end of 2017.

Two free tabloid dailies publish only on weekdays: 24H, belonging to Quebecor, which also owns the Journal de Montréal, which is distributed mostly outside metro stations, and Métro, which belongs to Transcontinental, owner of many community weeklies, which you can find inside the metro system.

Voir, which used to be an alt weekly, then was published on paper every two weeks, ceased print publication in 2016. The English-language cultural site Cult MTLpublishes one paper edition monthly. These can be picked up in many cafés and public places.

Fugues is a monthly small-size magazine and website by and for the local gay community, and can be found in the Villageand in many other cultural locations around town. There are also publications produced by the city’s many ethnic communities. Corriere Italiano is probably the oldest of these and may no longer be available on paper.

For international papers, check any Maison de la Presse Internationale or Multimags or drop into the Grande Bibliothèque ground-floor periodicals section any day but Monday.